Christopher Draper is 1! No toddler pics of Mum or Dad because they joined Sullivan as adults but I can tell you that he has Kendal's nose (as I was hoping for) and I'm pretty certain he has Lake's eyes and mouth. So like his Dad, I'm expecting him to look vaguely like a woman from certain angles when he gets older. ;) Gosh, I already love him though - such a sweet face!Onto the 4 year-olds!
Jack Benton...
...and his brother Charlie Benton. Not twins and not even biologically related. The Bentons struggled to conceive and turned to adoption. Jack was adopted and Charlie was a surprise baby for the Bentons, born just six months after Jack joined the family. So Jack looks like nobody and Charlie looks very similar to big sister Josie.
And Audrey Lachance is also 4 and totally adorable!Just one 5 year-old and that is Hope Collins!
Definitely the spitting image of her mother!Notes:
- As you probably guessed, I've decided to age up my toddlers at 4 instead of at 5. Toddlers in the game don't really act much like real life 4 year-olds (or 3 year-olds, really but I'm not going to go crazy with this). Real 4 year-olds are capable of conversation more advanced than babbling and are generally pretty steady on their feet. I know some people have pre-schools set up for their pre-K kids in their hoods but I'm not doing that just yet. For this year at least, 4 year-olds will probably stay home from school, assuming my experiment with that "no school" option on the Education Adjuster from InSim works out!
- I'm also going to be playing around with the stretch skeleton cheat this year, using Laura's table. For now though, I'm just going to do it on the kids and toddlers. I'd like to have adults of different heights too but I'm not sure yet how annoyed I'd be by the misaligned kissing. I'd mostly just like my 5 year-olds to look smaller than my 10 year-olds. I was playing with the heights a little bit a couple of nights ago and I think it's something that will work pretty well for me.
- Christopher is another 1 nice point Sim - I have way too many of them! I'd kill for a Sim with even 2 nice points right now. And really, considering Lake has 7 nice points and Kendal has 5, it doesn't make much sense to me that their son would turn out so mean, if it's supposed to be genetic. I really don't like the way the game distributes personality points and am considering taking it into my own hands. I'd still want some randomness in it. I'm going to mull it over and see if I can come up with a better way to do it, as opposed to letting the game decide.
Yay, happy birthday to the kiddies! They're all adorable!
ReplyDeleteI did my kids at 4 for the same reason. I just can't see a 4 yr. old kid waddling around like those toddlers do.
(Oh, an idea - and this is what I do - I send my preschoolers into school at noon, so it's like they're going in for a half day. Just have them walk to school, and they'll get credit for the whole day.)
Good luck with the stretching! I've found that the height differences in kissing doesn't really bother me too much. I can usually play around with the camera angle, or plop them on a OMSP for a second to make it look right. And even then, I just don't really have so many kissing shots that I can't take that extra time when I do want one.
And it looks great on the teenagers! It's especially noticeable between the 12 and 18 yr. olds.
Oh the kiddies are growing up! I like the fact that you guys are doing the stretch skeleton cheat. I used it one time, years ago, when I had two townies go to jail. LOL! I had them stand in front of the lineup and I wanted my guy to look taller. I'm just wondering with this cheat, do you have to enter in the values everytime you load the household?
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday guys!
ReplyDeleteI've done the same thing, aging my toddlers to kids at four. It just makes more sense. I allow them to go to school as well, there is a pre K class. Since I haven't updated in a while you haven't seen this. LOL
I've also decided to use the stretch skeleton as well. It's so great. I've used Laura's height as scale but I've adjusted them to the heights that I like. I'm really liking the difference with the children and teens. I might start with teh adults now too!
The stretch skeleton looks really cool. I've never used it even though it bothers me very much that male sims seem shorter than the females. I might give it a try sometimes too.
ReplyDeleteChristopher is such a cutie!
I love using the varying heights. For kissing shots, I just temporarily change the shorter Sim to the same height as the taller one using the stretch skeleton cheat in game, then pop him/her back down to normal height after the shot. I love having the 12 year olds actually shorter than the 17 year olds, and 4 year olds noticeably smaller than 10 year olds. :)
ReplyDeleteSimmington Hills - If you use SimPE to change the Sim's height in their character file, you don't have to keep changing everyone's height each time you load the lot. Laura has a great explanation on her site about how to do this.
I age my toddlers at 4 too. I agree, the toddler stage just doesn't fit for 4 year olds! I do send the 4 year olds to school and I have a preschool room set up for them where they can play with the activity table and other toys or paint.
The kids are all looking very cute! :)
Thanks everybody!
ReplyDeleteLaura, that's a great idea about sending them to school at noon! I might try that.
I've only briefly played with the stretchskeleton for the teens. I popped Josie Benton down a couple of notches, even though I imagine her as kind of tall. She looked so cute though!
I think I'll eventually use it for all Sims but I'm still deciding if I want teens to all be around the same height according to age, or if I want it to somehow correspond to their adult height.
Simmington, ha, a line-up! Yeah, you'd need different heights for that - cute idea! If you click where I've said "using Laura's tables", there's a link to Laura's explanation on how to make this permanent in SimPE. It's very, very easy! It's tedious if you're doing a lot of Sims (WHY must I open neighbourhood browser again after doing each Sim? Gah!) but it's not too scary.
Riverdale, everyone's jumping on the stretchskeleton bandwagon! LOL. It's a lot of fun. I was expecting the stretchy arms on the taller kids to bother me a lot more than they do but it's hardly noticeable once they start doing anything at all.
You guys have me wanting to build a pre-school now! I think I'll just tack on a pre-school room to the primary school though - once tax time rolls around, I'll see if Augustin has the funds for it.
Cissie, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the male Sims look shorter than the women! I said that at N99 once and was (politely) shouted down! I have a bit of a thing about the guys being taller than girls, apart from the few male Sims in my game I see as being a bit short (Gordon Nott, for example). In experimenting with the kissing, I noticed that if you bump them up or down very, very slightly, the misalignment is barely noticeable at all.
Shana, temporarily changing the height seems like a good idea, as is Laura's idea of using OMSPs (OMSPs are what I used for Asha and Luc when she was still a teen). I think I'm actually going to try this, maybe slowly - just as I play each family, I'll decide how tall or short they'd all be. So be prepared for some height disparity while I'm figuring this all out!
After reading your and Laura's comments about 4-year-old toddlers I have to say I agree with you. 4-year-olds don't waddle around and they can have real conversations. I think I'll start aging up my toddlers at 4 as well. I'll probably make other modifications to my age groups as well. Thanks for the tips once again :)
ReplyDeleteThe other bonus of doing this is that you'll get to see what my Sims will look like as kids one day earlier! Or is it just me who goes crazy with curiosity over that? LOL.
ReplyDeleteOOH Hope is adorable! Loving the birthday posts. I don't have much free time tonight, but can't lose track of whose being born and how old they all are!
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at my stats, I see a lot of people catching up on birthdays before going on to read other posts. It's so different to how I read blogs, so I find that fascinating. LOL.
ReplyDeleteI just realised Hope actually has Emil's nose, which is why she looks a little less pointy than Anna did as a toddler. Those freckles really fool me into thinking Hope is Anna all over.
I'm curious Carla, what type of stats do you use? And how did you set that up for your blog? I have stats set up for my main website, but haven't seen anything for it under Blogger. I'd love to be able to see stats for my journal sites.
ReplyDeleteStatCounter
ReplyDeleteYou have to pay if you want to look back further than 500 entries but it takes me at least a couple of days to get 500 page views so it's sufficient for me. When I signed up, there were specific instructions on how to install StatCounter on Blogspot blogs. Very easy. :)
Thanks so much! It was very easy!
ReplyDelete